


it feels like home to me

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (because of the Sokovia Accords), Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, F/M, Forbidden Love, Future Fic, Healing, Introspection, Morning Kisses, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-18 04:50:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8149669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy has something new to lose.





	

It’s not home, because it can’t be. Not after everything that has happened. It’s not home because even though she feels Coulson’s warmth next to her she also feels the scar on his shin from when she buried him in rubble (the one he insists doesn’t hurt anymore) when she touches her toes against his skin.

“Five more minutes,” he mumbles, voice a growl, a horrible morning person, grumpy and boyish when he wakes, and Daisy smiles as if she were home.

How can it be home after what she did to the team? It’s enough of a gift that they let her come back, that they insist she’s an asset to the new director of SHIELD, that they fought to have her back, in this bunk. It’s too greedy to want it to be home, when these people have already done so much. 

It’s not home, but Coulson turns and wraps his cold fingers around her shoulder. He noses the curve of her collarbone, tickling her.

“Okay, okay,” she says. “Five more minutes,” and she lets him wrap that arm around her waist, coil himself like a snake around her.

This is what she was fearing - not _this_ , she never imagined this - why he stayed away. Getting attached again. Except she never stopped. Distance just made it easier. 

It’s not home, this little bunk. She’s been back for over a month but she still can’t call it hers. She keeps her clothes neatly tucked in the closet, a bag ready, the heart ready to flee. But then she sees Coulson’s jeans folded over her chair, and she sees his prosthetic on her desk. Her pillow smells of him, her sheets smells of his sex, her pleasure. It’s not home but it’s different to all the cheap and clean motel rooms she’d been in and out of for six months. Her new van which she tried not to sleep in too often, so she wouldn’t get a habit (that’s her biggest fear now, _habit_ ). 

She didn’t know how still she had been before - for three years - until she started moving again. Now she is afraid of this new stillness, of Coulson’s lips sliding down her neck, loving her before his body is wholly awake, loving her on instinct and in the blind, loving her like she never knew could be loved, spelling disaster, for her, for himself, for both. She should keep moving, instead she stays in this bed, this bunk, this not-home.

_I should get going_ she thinks, meaning getting ready for the day, meaning going for good, leaving, like she tried once already, but instead she turns on her side, cuddling up to Coulson where she should run from him again.

For a while it had worked, too (she had to, there was no other goddamn option, you have to leave when you can’t stay). She had remembered the freedom of not speaking to anybody in days, of not seeing a familiar face in months. It was a shark-freedom and she stopped a moment once and thought she might have to die for it, or that it would be better to die for it. You’re mistaking exhaustion with despair, a psychobabble voice in her head said, but that voice sounded too much like Andrew Garner’s and the next time she moved it led her right here.

It led her _right here_.

It’s not home, because it won’t last. She’ll lose it. She has lost it before. Just like she has lost everything in her life: her parents, her childhood, her faith, Trip, her home, Afterlife, Lincoln, even her own will… This is not different. It won’t last. Things change - there’s enough proof of that in the fact that Coulson is here in her bunk, lying next to her, reaching to touch her cheek, drawing the line of her jaw. It’s not a bad change - just truly unexpected, Daisy always feeling there was a part of Coulson she could never touch, and the relief she felt when it turned out that wasn’t true - but it’s a reminder that everything changes. This will, too. Coulson will stop loving her, or she will lose him in some other, worse, way.

Coulson cups her face and kisses her, softly, mouth closed to minimize morning breath in case it’s a problem (it’s not, not right now).

“I thought five more minutes meant five more minutes _of sleep_ ,” she teases him, and even though this is not home Daisy finds herself smiling a lot these days, especially in the mornings (and at night, when Coulson crawls to the edge of the bed to kiss her stomach, or when he cracks some silly joke just as she is falling asleep).

“I can multi-task,” he argues, brushing his upper lip across her bottom one, his eyes half closed, eyelids heavy and trembling because Daisy is close enough to notice, close enough that his eyelashes stroke her cheek as he kisses her, and Daisy parts her lips under his without thinking (always without thinking, _idiot_ , like the chant of her childhood: you never learn, you always expect the new place to be home) and feels a smile against her mouth, morning breath is not a problem for him either.

They could never be the kind of couple who calls in sick, their job is right here, but that’s how Daisy feels, like those scenes in movies where the boy and the girl are sleeping in a huge loft with huge windows and the sunlight comes in and they are wrapped around each other under unrealistically immaculate white sheets and someone calls their boss and fakes a terribly fake cough so they can both stay home in bed together.

They are the kind of people for whom this is forbidden - _literally_ , from the moment she had to sign the Sokovia Accords just so she could help her people from inside the very organization hunting and monitoring them. This thing they are doing, the way Coulson draws a lazy finger across her ribcage, goes against rules written and unwritten. He takes her arm in his hand and kisses the light purple skin of her bruises. When she was on her own she went past the limit of her powers too many times and now they are taking longer to heal than they should. But she can’t stop going on missions, not now. And he has stopped asking her not to - or his new way of asking is kissing the trace of her injuries like this, like a believer kissing the feet of a saint.

This is not home, because the path they took here is way too long and twisted, paved by other people’s suffering, and a lot of their own. Because they arrived at it after mere _days_ of working together again and years of thinking there was nothing like this between them at all; after a bad mission, a bad injury (hers, Coulson’s, it doesn’t matter, there was blood, a desperate kiss of relief), after she saw Lola again and couldn’t hide what it did to her, after she told him to call her _Agent Johnson_ and in a few hours he was breathing _Daisy_ against her stomach, any of the improbable paths they took here.

His body is so still, so accommodating to her own, like something permanent ( _no_ ), his breathing so relaxed. One might imagine he doesn’t have a care in the world

If they catch them what will they do to Coulson? There’s no lower level they can demote him to. The Accords are vague on penalties. What is the penalty for loving her like Coulson does? She’s afraid it’s always been death.

This is not home but she has to make it work. She has to make herself useful, she has to make up for all the things she did, she has to atone. She keeps finding new things she has to make up for - like this, like Coulson, like Coulson’s body pressed against her and his mouth mapping out the curve of her neck and shoulder, she doesn’t deserve something like this, she never deserved his friendship, and now the debt has doubled.

She is greedy, knowing this is not home, how could it be, or how could it last, she turns to face Coulson, lining up their bodies and mouths, sighing against his lips, then dropping her head to his chest, to the quiet heartbeat, the content heartbeat. Coulson wraps both arms around her now, careful not to press the hard metal of his prosthetic dock too much against her. His uneven hugs when they are alone are becoming familiar. Familiar is another way of saying habit.

Habit is another way of saying -

Something to lose.

“Five more minutes,” Daisy says, mutters against his heart.

It’s not home, but it feels like home to her.


End file.
